Author­i­ties in Kabardino-Balkaria have been promoting ambitious plans to kickstart the republic’s industry with a new hydromet­al­lur­gi­cal plant. But for ‘envi­ron­men­tal reasons’, and supposed archae­o­log­i­cal dis­cov­er­ies at the site, the plans — the estimated cost of which had began to spiral — may now be per­ma­nent­ly on ice.